New Player Guide
Intro This page is made for new players OR old players who forget a few things to come and learn more about what to do in the beginning of the game, So come take a look! :) The Basics of the Basics Straw Hat Samurai: Duels is a strategy and skill oriented game. By customizing your character to learn innumerable different skills and stats, you create a unique in-game being that is controlled by very simple commands. This involves dragging your mouse across the screen, which creates a red line. Your character follows this line once you let go of the mouse. This should all be covered in the ‘Prologue’ of Season One. Stat Points: Stat Points increase your Defense, Attack, and Speed respectively. While their names are rather explanatory in themselves, links have been provided for pages that further illustrate their properties. Overview: Character Stats Skill Points You receive Skill Points upon leveling up. As opposed to the three Stat Points you receive per leveling up, you only get one. Most players save these skill points up to unlock Skills listed in the Skills category. Skills can be accessed by clicking on them, or in the case of a computer, by pressing the corresponding key. Skill points, not stat points, stay with you upon rebirthing. Most unlock all skills upon reaching Rokudan (your fifth rebirth.) To further explain rebirthing, please visit the page on Rebirthing. The Three Stances You can switch stances by clicking on your character’s profile view (located on the lower left corner of your screen. Here are the overviews for each stance. Light Stance: deals the least amount of damage by a large margin compared to the other stances, yet allows the character to move the quickest; launch and combos are very easy to do in Light Stance, and Light Stance has the largest range. This is a very popular stance among higher levels, though difficult to pull off in lower levels. Recommended Level: Pro Balanced Stance: deals damage in the middle ground (between Light and Heavy) and has a slash range in the middle ground (between Light and Heavy.) Juggling is slightly harder in Balanced than it is in Light. Recommended Level: Middle Amateur to Pro. Heavy Stance: deals the most damage. Heavy Stance has the shortest slash range. Heavy Stance does not allow you to juggle, however, when you knock a player to the ground, a downward slash on them (called the ‘stab’) can inflict massive damage (read ‘Basic Attacks’ for more info.) Light Stance deals 20 % more damage when it is used against a player using Heavy. NOTE: Something that is, for whatever reason, not widely known is that certain stances do more damage to certain stances than others. It's a rock-paper-scissor system- Light is supposed to be Heavy, Heavy is supposed to beat Balanced, and Balanced is supposed to beat Light. List of Basic Attacks Slash:' The basic attack. To slash, draw a line close to horizontal as possible.' Uppercut: a slash that starts at the ground to the sky. Downswing: A diagonal line starting from the top to the bottom. Stab: A skill in Heavy. After knocking down the opponent, draw a vertical line directly towards the opponent’s body. This inflicts major damage, but is slow and hard to place right. Launch: By getting this skill in Heavy Balanced or Light, you can uppercut your opponent (slash from ground to sky) and launch them in the air, where you can proceed to juggle them, Light with pratice can juggle without any struggle, Balanced stance is a bit harder But can still juggle, Heavy is nearly imposible to juggle with, Light can hit 7 time per juggle (the first hit being the launch) while bal and heavy are limited to 3 hit. Juggle: Hit a person multiple times after they are launched midair. This causes them to bounce back into the air. At the max, Balanced Stance can juggle three times and again light stance 7. An amateur mistake common in beginners is that the character will start its slash at whatever end your line started at when you drew it, and yet they draw the line from the opposite end of where there character is. Start the slash at where your character is. Otherwise, they must wade through the enemy before starting the slash, getting dealt unnecessary damage. Currency Currency within the game occurs most often in the form of coins. You can use these coins to buy things in the Market, from Peddlers, shops and inns within Towns, and to sell various items as well. The other form of currency is gold. Gold is unobtainable unless you have done one of either of these things: 1. Used money from real life to buy gold; 2. Receiving 25 gold upon rebirthing (reaching level 80 and going back to level 1.) Gold is the only currency accepted in the buying of items from the Ninja Shop. Therefore, it is much more coveted than coins. One must note that Gold can NOT BE TRADED NOR RECEIVED; this is to prevent the use of spam accounts trading the three gold that you are given in the beginning of the game to a 'main' account. Tips and Tricks  When you uppercut, your sword covers some distance behind you as well. This means you can damage enemies on either side.  In Light Stance, you can ‘fly’ by slashing above your character over and over again. The character will follow the multiple slash lines. This is not possible in Balanced or Heavy stance, making Light Stance the stance of choice for many pros. However, this stance is not recommended for beginners, due to the low damage it deals. There are various commands that your character can follow outside of a duel/fight. Here is a list of them. /sit: Doing /sit will cause your character to sit down in one of three different ways. In one, your avatar will sit upon their knees, with their legs folding underneath their torso. The second will cause one to sit in a more 'casual' way, with one leg up and a hand resting on it. The third has the character to sit in a cross-legged position, very similar to the first position mentioned. Doing /sit will cause their pose to be any one of these three, by seemingly random chance. To choose which one you want, repeatedly enter /sit until your desired position is achieved. When you are talking to someone in-game, /sit is considered one of the more polite positions for your character to adopt while engaging in a conversation. /rest: This causes your avatar to lay down, arms under their head. Decidedly casual. /seppuku: This causes your avatar to kneel, stab themselves with their sword, and slump over, seemingly 'dead'. Your HP is reduced to 1, no matter your previous HP/DEF stats. Seppuku battles are becoming increasingly popular, where samurai duel each other with only one HP, so that HP and DEF stats do not matter- just who hit first. In a way, seppuku duels are very much what samurai of old did. /gangnamstyle: This causes your avatar to say the words 'Gangnam style' and start to do the popular Gangnam style dance, from the video produced by PSY.  List of Special Moves: Note: Chronos, one of the top players in the Straw hat World, USED To teaches theses at his School of Bushido. Drop in on one of his free lessons when he is having them. Each focuses on a different stance, however chronos being busy and getting old he stopped hosting his class, However if you asked him gently for lessons im sure he would accept. Flying Invocation: Made by Shujinko, this Balanced Stance/Light Stance move consists of a long slash and an uppercut (or ‘launch slash’) following immediately afterward. Works best when far away. Cross Blade: Drawing an X with two slashes from the ground up. Works best when close to the enemy. Cross Juggle: Works the same as Cross Blade. Juggle after the enemy is in the air (from cross blade or Flying Invocation.) Flash Strike: a rapid back-and-forth slash, used after they fall (preferably from the Cross Juggle or Cross Blade.) Invocation Flash Step: Combine the previous moves in a combo.l List of Secrets Techniques: Those are techniques barely known by players, , While Only some players used to know about those techniques, most of them have nowadays passed away with their knowledge, Here a list of The VERY few discovered/still known secret/ techinique to this day. The Techniques Ghostly Figure invisible movement: A close range technique That only work in light stance, Launch and juggle the ennemy without Really moving from your spot, Kabu Wolf And kojiro Know about this technique. One Sword Style Instant Movements: A bal stance technique that let you instantly Launch someone in a way where you can repeat it pretty easily, It can be countered but it is very hard to counter, All you need is some pratice, The technique itself has two variant, Instant Movements being the stronger But more difficult version. One Sword Style Instant Strike: The weaker version of instant Movements, Bal stance technique Instantly launch someone Without moving from your Spot, Making it Harder to repeat As someone can easily Smoke bomb out of it. Those are the Three known Secret techniques Towns Towns, villages, and castle towns each generally belong to a clan. Ruined villages are villages with a prosperity of lower than 500. (For more information on the prosperity level of villages, visit the page on Towns. These villages require you to fight past bandits to access the NPCs residing in the village. Villages hold inns, peddlers, and bounty boards. Towns hold everything a village holds, as well as stables and barbers. Castle towns hold everything a town holds, as well as barbers, banks, gambling dens, blacksmiths, and outer castle walls. You can fight past the guards of the castle walls if the castle town does not belong to your clan, and enter the castle flagroom, which generally holds a green chest. If you are of the castle town’s clan, then you have easy access to the castle, but there will be no green chest. If you belong to a clan, the ‘influence’ of each clan on each town is very important. Through quests, you can raise the influence your clan has on each village, and potentially take the village. Questing is explained below. An (incomplete)chart on the various structures within villages is provided on this page: Settlements Quests Questing should be explained to some degree within the game, provided that you followed the story arc. Thus, the basics have been glossed over, and more specifics added. In any sort of area with NPCs, such as towns, castle towns, and villages, you may talk to the NPCs and have three options: quest, talk, or trade. They will request you of something: this something is usually item retrieval (such as bringing an item from a dungeon, or picking a flower or herb), but can also be things like summoning/driving away mercenaries, killing bandits/oni/undead, and asking for a monk’s blessing. Chronos of Clan Honoshihai explains the tier system used to rank the quests in order of difficulty: Quoted by Chronos, verified by Deception, appropriate changes made Tier 1 (Less than 5-15 minutes): Bounty in a field/forest/dojo/town, kill Oni/Undead/Bandits/Animals, Get monks to bless/Get Mercenaries for town, pick up herb/flower. Tier 2 (More than 15 Minutes): Bounty in a dungeon/mine/cave, bring back some item with long name(Or a Daruma doll) from dungeon/cave/mine, kill someone or something in a cave/mine/dungeon or +4 territories away(which should never happen). Tier 3 (Impossible quests that would take up to 1 hours+): Bring Mining Materials you do not have, trade quests that have you talk to ~20 people that end with a dungeon quest. Generally, all quests give you coins, EXP, and will add +5 prosperity to the town. If you belong to a clan, the standard amount of clan influence added to the town would be +5. For more information on Questing, visit the page on Quests. War Room Once you reach Level 10, you may choose to join a clan. Until you join a clan, you will not be able to use the full functions of the War Room. The four major story clans are as follows: Clan Aka Ryu (the ‘red’ clan), Clan Aoi Hoiru (the ‘blue’ clan), Clan Midori Ken (the ‘green’ clan,) and Clan Ki Sensu (the ‘yellow’ clan.) Locations/Scenery Straw Hat Samurai Duels contains many different background sceneries. A list of them is provided. Bamboo Forest/ Forest/Farm/Plains: These all may or may not contain enemies. The standard flute music is played in these areas. Temple:' A temple is in the background. You may enter the temple. Monks reside in temples.' Beach: If you are in a territory the borders the edge of the map, then you may come across a Beach. Graveyard: Graveyards often contain flowers needed for quests. They do not often have enemies in them. Their background music is a haunting piano melody. They are often very hard to locate within a territory. As Deception has a peculiar fondness for graveyards, a list of coordinates for the locations of the random ones Deception has come across in his travels are provided: (67, 13: Sector 2, 3), (60, 13: Sector 3, 2), (33, 54, Sector: 5, 3), (32, 51, Sector: 1, 2) (42, 50, Sector: 2,2) (44, 43 Sector 3,4(?) (44, 43, Sector 3,4) (45, 43 Sector 3,3) Ninja Trails: Ninja trails can be extremely useful. According to Deception’s calculations, there is at least one Ninja Trail per territory. They can be found if you search bushes (2 AP) and it takes one AP to use the trail. A short trail of traps and oni follow. At the end of the trail are five portals that lead to different villages in the surrounding area. This makes Ninja Trails extremely useful and more affordable than using stables. As Deception has an uncanny sense on where these are located, here are the random ones he’s come across thus far: (58, 11, Sector 2,2) (43, 48 Sector 1,3) (27,51 Sector 3,3) (43,48 Sector 1,3) (46, 43 Sector 4,4) (47, 41 Sector 3,2) (52, 23 Sector 3,2) Enemies File:Ssdbandit.jpg An example of an avatar that signals the existence of a bandit. Bandits/Soldiers: Bandits come in four different types. Heavies: Heaves are the bandits who hold the swords above their heads. These bandits have the longest range, but are quite slow and do not run. Quickly slash them when their swords are still raised. Knifers: Knifers are slow and do not have a long ranged attack. They are very easy to kill, and no particular strategy is needed in killing them off. AIs: AIs run around like a player on autoslash. While they deal more damage, their health is the same as other bandits, and can be one-shotted. AIs can throw kunai of various elements. Spearmen: Spearmen have long poles that they hold out in front of them. When they sot you, they will start to run at you with the spear extended. To avoid their attack, ‘ ‘do not run straight into them.’ ‘ When the spearmen approach you, they will pause to pull back their spear and stab you. ‘ ‘During that time, slash them.’ ‘ Basically, pause before attacking. Shieldmen: Shieldmen run at you with shields extended, like the spearmen, but their reach is not as great. However, during battle, you may find your sword/kunai bounces off of their shields. As such, do not aim at their midsection, but at their legs (beneath the shield.) Try to attack them when they are not moving (not running at you.) Polemen (exclusive to Soldiers): Polemen have an incredible reach. General Amaya and Yuuta (characters in the Season One story line) are polemen. They have three basic attacks: an attack where they jump at you with pole extended, a stabbing attack, and a juggling attack. While incredibly annoying, polemen are slow as they cannot run and instead walk. As with spearmen, try to attack them swiftly and pass them by as you attack. Oni: Oni are around half the height of the standard character. They can do two Skills that are accessible for your character: Dash and Jump. As such, they can be hard to hit. They also throw Rocks, which are not aimed at your head and instead lower, making them harder to counter. The passive skill Deflect can be useful in dealing with them, as you can counter their Rocks. Animals: You can run into various animals in the fields, which may drop different meats and items. For more information on various enemies, please visit the page on Forest Creatures. These creatures include boar, foxes, wolves, bears, and deer/stags. Rebirth When your character hits level 80, you can Rebirth. This resets your level to 1 and returns all your Stat Points but NOT your Skill Points or any items you have so far collected. You also receive 25 Gold for every rebirth, allowing you to buy things like Soulbound Armor, which allows for easier transitions in between Rebirthing. If one Rebirths enough time, they may have full masteries in every single Stance and Skill. This is the primary reason people Rebirth. Per how many times you Rebirth, your title increases in this order. No Rebirth: Shodan Rebirth Once: Nidan Rebirth Twice: Sandan Rebirth Thrice times: Yondan Rebirth Four'' times'': Godan Rebirth Five times: Rokudan Rebirth Six times: Shichidan Rebirth seven times: Hachidan Rebirth eight times: Kudan Rebirth Nine times (final): Jūdan